


Indelible

by Luckless_Salmon



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Car Accidents, Decapitation, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, M/M, Medication, Mentioned Suicidal Ideation, Modern AU, Pre-Relationship, Psychological Trauma, Schizoaffective Disorder, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luckless_Salmon/pseuds/Luckless_Salmon
Summary: Dimitri still dreams of that day, five years later. Modern AU.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 100





	Indelible

**Author's Note:**

> oooHHHH BOY this starts a little fucked up; please mind the tags and ensure self-care before and after reading this.
> 
> A bit of context before we begin: Dimitri and Edelgard grew up as siblings for a good majority of their lives, including after their parents deaths. El does her best to help her lil bro, but anyone with experience with this sort of thing knows that isn't always enough. This is a modern AU.

The air was thick with the scent of smoke and burning rubber; there was something heady too, a smell he could recognize now as seared flesh. From his position, crushed beneath the swell of an airbag, Dimitri could faintly make out his father and stepmother in the front seats.

“Father?” he called, reaching for the seemingly unmarred sleeve of Lambert’s sweater. Some primal part of Dimitri’s brain was screeching, begging for him to stop whatever he was trying to do; this was nothing more than a dream and could only end the same tragic way. Less than five years ago, he had watched his father’s head fall from his shoulders as the paramedics dragged the older man’s burned corpse from the wreckage of their SUV. The police officer had tried to shield Dimitri’s eyes, to prevent him from tarnishing the last image he had of his father, but there was no way he could miss the ‘thump’ of Lambert’s skull as it lolled off his shoulders and fell to the ground. It was too vivid in his mind to be anything but real.

Still, Dimitri couldn’t stop himself from reaching out.

“Dad, are you okay?” he tried once more, tugging gently on the knitted material. There was a pit of dread bubbling in his stomach, fear of the inevitable lack of response that was bound to occur. His fingers trembled.

What he didn’t expect, however, was Lambert to pull his hand from beneath the crushed plastic and leather of the dashboard, to place a disfigured hand upon his sons own.

“Foolish, always so foolish Dimitri,” Lambert gurgled, cranking his head around at an unnatural angle to face his son. The older Blaiddyd’s skin had peeled away as a result of the engines flames, revealing burnt muscle that oozed fluid. His hand was no better, the jagged ends of finger bones digging into Dimitri’s singed flesh. “If you wish to join us so desperately, why have you done nothing about it?”

“I’m... I’m sorry father,” Dimitri replied lowly, voice trembling. Lambert’s shattered bones were ripping into his skin, drawing blood, and it _hurt_.

“If I were the one left alive, it wouldn’t take me this long,” the older man continued, squeezing harder and harder. Dimitri could feel the flames begin to lick at the nape of his neck; the scenario was a familiar one, something that haunted his consciousness following the accident, but things rarely progressed this far. Usually the paramedics would have pulled him from the wreckage by now, would have hustled him away from the corpses of his parents. Never before had he felt the flames eat away at his own skin.

“Dad, I’m so, so sorry,” the younger blond practically sobbed, attempting to pull his hand away. “Please stop, you’re hurting me.”

Lambert chuckled darkly, tugging on the hand within his grasp. “You know nothing of pain, boy, nothing of what it feels like to truly _suffer_.”

There was a pause as Patricia, who had remained silent up until this point, began to cackle. It was a brittle thing, more like the keening of an injured animal than a human, but it was likely all she could manage; her mandible was completely detached, dangling from her face only by a thin piece of skin.

“Now, though,” Lambert finally continued, blood dripping from his lips. “You will. I will teach you all about it when you join us. We can be a family once more, my cub.”

As Lambert’s fingers pierced through the flesh of his sons palm, Dimitri screamed.  
—

Jolting from his prone position, Dimitri clawed at the fingers wrapped around his bicep. Whatever this thing was, it certainly wasn’t his father and he certainly wasn’t going to go to hell with it.

“Whoa, whoa, hey there your Princeliness,” someone called out, presumably the owner of the fingers. “Calm down, you are gonna hurt yourself, or more importantly, hurt me.”

There was something soothing about the voice, something that calmed Dimitri’s frayed nerves. The blond sucked in a deep breath, focusing on the expansion of his ribs. The dirt was cool beneath his fingers, the setting sun warm on his skin. Whoever was talking to him smelled faintly of pine, not burnt flesh and rubber. He breathed out.

Upon opening his eyes, Dimitri found himself looking into the concerned face of one Claude Von Riegan; embarrassment settled in his chest as he recalled the events of the past day.

As the House Leaders of Garreg Mach Prep, Claude, Edelgard, and himself had been sent into the wilderness to camp for an evening. The dean had referred to it as a bonding exercise, a chance for them to learn to rely on one another as allies. The reasoning had seemed flimsy at best, but the pounding in Dimitri’s skull had prevented him from thinking about it too thoroughly. His migraines had been particularly intense recently, leaving him little time and energy to focus on anything other than getting through the day.

Edelgard had led their group into the forest, her pack perched high on her back; Claude followed a few meters behind. Typically Dimitri prided himself on keeping up with his sister, but today it had been simply... too much. He found himself trailing behind the other two house leaders, a bit woozy.

Time had begun to feel abstract at some point, although Dimitri couldn’t exactly put his finger on when. Perhaps it was when Claude had began commenting on the local fauna, or as the frequency of Edelgard’s concerned looks increased. The sun was boiling him alive beneath his uniform, the sweat trickling down his neck freezing him to his core. Although he had refrained from indulging in the breakfast spread provided by the monastery, his stomach still churned dangerously. The world appeared to spin beneath his feet.

What felt like an eternity later, Edelgard had come to a halt. She and Claude exchanged some words, the majority of which sounded much like jiberish to Dimitri; the blond had tried to focus on breathing deeply, slowly, much like his therapist had instructed. Despite his best efforts, sour saliva had begun to accumulate in his mouth.

“...your thoughts, Dimitri?”

“You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” the blonde had managed to slur, pressing a palm to his mouth before stumbling towards a nearby tree line.

Everything after that was a blur of color and sound; the acrid scent of vomit, calloused fingers pressed against his forehead, the soft murmuring of voices.

“Mit’ya, have you been taking your medication?” someone asked, likely Edelgard considering the use of his childhood nickname.

Dimitri shook his head, struggling to speak. His tongue felt thick and foreign in his mouth. “Forgot it at home.”

“Oh Dima...” the voice cooed, equal parts exasperation and pity. “What am I going to do with you?”

There were a few more muffled noises before everything had gone black.

How mortifying.

“I-I apologize,” Dimitri breathed out, allowing his head to fall against the Earth. The surface beneath his head was soft, likely some fabric pulled from Edelgard’s backpack. “Hurting you was far from my intention, I was just having a dream and...”

“Hey, hey, don’t even worry about it,” the brunet replied, keeping his voice low. “I rarely have nightmares myself, but know It’s nothing personal.”

Despite Claude’s words, Dimitri still felt the vestige of guilt nipping at his conscious. Leave it to him, the bonafide king of suffering, to embarrass himself in front of a new person (and an admittedly attractive one at that). Had he paid more attention, perhaps triple checked his luggage before heading off to the monastery, the entire ordeal could have been avoided. There was little he could do to make the situation any less awkward, however, so he chose to let the two of them fall into silence.

“How are you feeling?” Claude inquired after a few moments, apparently not comfortable in the quiet of the forest. “I know I feel like ass after throwing up, so I can’t imagine how it feels like to both vomit AND pass out.”

Dimitri snorted at that, opening a single cornflower blue eye. “I’m okay, all things considered. If anything, I feel worse for you and El than I do for myself; neither of you should have been privy to such a display, especially as a result of my own lack of responsibility.”

“You apologize too much,” Claude murmured, squeezing Dimitri’s bicep. “Although you are lucky you are so damn handsome, I wouldn’t risk my Yeezy’s getting vommed on for just anybody, ya know?”

Dimitri’s felt his face flush. _‘Was it Claude who was holding back my hair? Did he just call me handsome? Who the fuck wears $800 sneakers to go on a hike?’_

“Mit’ya?”

Before Dimitri had time to process the information overloading his brain, Edelgard stepped back into the clearing. Though the stack of lumber in her arms appeared rather hefty, she tossed the wood aside as if it were composed of feathers upon seeing her brother awake. It took her only moments after that to embrace him.

“I just about had a heart attack when you collapsed,” she murmured, pulling him into a seated position from his place on the ground. “What would mom and dad say if I let you die doing something as innocuous as walking in the forest?”

Dimitri felt his heart swell just a little at that. “El, you know you don’t have to take care of me, I can-“

The blond was stopped abruptly by a harsh ‘whack’ to the back of his head.

“You need to take better care of yourself, you fool,” Edelgard huffed, rising back to a standing position. Despite the harshness of her words, her tone was soft, as close to comforting as it could come. “I can’t watch over you forever, you know.”

“You didn’t have to hit me so hard,” Dimitri complained, rubbing at the back of his skull.

“Stop complaining and help me with this firewood,” Edelgard shot back, motioning towards the jumbled pile. “Now that you are back in commission, there’s nothing stopping you from pulling your own weight.”

“Ah,” Claude called out, a teasing lilt to his tone. “Sibling love, how beautiful.”

“You can help too, Nurse Riegan,” the young woman grumped, reaching up to tie her hair in a low ponytail. “After you are done making goo-goo eyes at my brother, that is.”

(Dimitri didn’t miss the small flush of color that rose in Claude’s cheeks at that).

With a dramatic sigh, the dark-haired boy rose to his feet. “Of course, Princess. However would we foolish men survive without your benevolent guidance?”

“You wouldn’t,” Edelgard retorted simply. “You would most definitely die.”

Dimitri snorted, accepting the hand Claude offered to help him up. If one could say anything about his step-sister, it was that she was a natural born leader through-and-through. Perhaps that’s what had drawn his father to her mother in the first place. Regardless of their past, Dimitri was proud to step into the future with Edelgard at his side. The upcoming year at Garreg Mach was certainly to be an exciting one.

As he dusted off his slacks, the blond’s eyes came to rest on a mustard-colored piece of fabric; it was positioned directly where his head had been. He picked it up with the intention of returning it to his sister, only to see a very different set of initials sewn into the label.

_C.R._

“Oh thanks for picking that up, your Princeliness,” Claude called upon seeing Dimitri’s confounded expression. “Chivalry isn’t dead, I guess.”

Something fluttered in Dimitri’s belly, although it was far more pleasant sensation than his earlier nausea. “O-oh, you’re welcome.”

This year was going to be an exciting one, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written over a two day span and not beta'd; I may come back later and make some minor alterations. Thank you for taking the time to read.


End file.
